What is the Difference Between Shared and Business Hosting?

The following table should help to clarify the differences between Hostwinds Shared and Business Hosting services:

Features

Shared

Business

Clients Per Server

60

50

Excessive Resource Suspension

Yes, after five (5) warnings you will need to upgrade to Business

None

Virus/Malware Scans

Twice monthly

Weekly

PHP Memory Limit

256 MB

512 MB

Web Server

Apache

LiteSpeed

Inode limit (file limits)

250,000

600,000

Hourly Outbound Email Limit

25

250

Differences Between Shared and Business Plans Explained:

Clients Per Server – In attempts to keep the costs of the hosting plans lowered, the servers resources are shared amongst multiple clients on the same server. This helps to split the cost of the server, and any necessary licenses. This would be the number of clients that we place on each shared or business server

Excessive Resource Suspension – As our servers are shared among users, those who abuse the system may receive a suspension for overusing the resources allowed for the given account. Generally you will be warned before any suspension

PHP Memory Limit – This is the amount of Memory that is allowed for your PHP scripts to execute. This limit is in place to prevent abuse of the resources by a particular user.

Web Server – This is what is used to serve the web pages from the Hosting server. Apache is a commonly used application and is quite popular. LiteSpeed is used as a replacement for Apache, and is much more capable in handling multiple concurrent connections. LiteSpeed is a much faster alternative to Apache.

Inode Limit – To prevent abuse to our Unlimited Disk Space on our Shared and Business hosting plans, there is instead, an Inode limit. This counts for how many files and folders exist within the hosting plan. (There would be no limit to the size of the files, only the quantity)

Hourly Outbound Email Limit – This is an email limit that applies to the hosting plan to prevent a mass amount of email from leaving the server.

Resource Limits Reached may happen with our Shared Web Hostingservices for various reasons. This can mean several different things based on your Entry Processesand Memoryusage, so if the Entry Processesare high, it is a natural progression to upgrade to a Business Hosting planso you have more resources and can continue your site’s growth and success on a more optimized service.

Our Business Plans are monitored for resources, but they are not automatically suspended for Excessive Resource Usage like the Shared Plans. If you begin using too many resources and you are ready to continue to grow, you would want to upgrade to no less than a Level 5 cloud server in order to see upgraded performance and continue your growth and success.

Our Shared Web Hosting Plans are also monitored for resources if the limit is hit more than 5 times in a month the account will be automatically suspended and an account upgrade would be highly suggested. This is suggested in order to prevent any further interruptions and to ensure you have the resources you need to continue growing your website. A natural progression from Shared Hosting is to our Business Hosting Plan and is what we would suggest as the next step from Shared Web Hosting.

If you require SSH or RDP access, or require a more secured and independent environment with more resources and customization ability, such as a different Web Engine like Nginx, the ability to make server wide changes, or other factors, an independent hosting platform such as Hostwinds’ Dedicated Server or Cloud VPS Server is required